The ISelf collection is a UK-based collection of contemporary art which focuses on ‘issues of identity and the human condition’. In other words – bodies. It was established in 2009 and includes ‘paintings, sculptures and photographs mainly of the human body with a deliberate emphasis towards collecting female artists. In other words – women’s bodies.
Installation view of ISelf Collection: Bumped Bodies at the at the Whitechapel Gallery. Photo by Steven White
This exhibition is the final one in a series of four selections from the collection which the Whitechapel has held over the past twelve months, each one showcasing works by different artists in the collection. This one displays the work of 23 international artists. To quote the blurb, the exhibition:
invites us to reflect on the notion of self by questioning the physical and material cohesion of bodies and sculptures… Works on show offer fragmented, deconstructed and visceral perspectives where bodies intersect with inanimate objects… In this final display drawn from the ISelf collection artists open up the possibility of thinking beyond selfhood.
The exhibition as a whole takes its name from one particular work, a vivid depiction of pregnancy being undergone by what looks like a transhuman cyborg from the future – Bumped Body by Paloma Varga Weisz’s (b. 1966, Germany).
Bumped Body (2007) by Paloma Varga Weisz. Courtesy of Paloma Varga Weisz © DACS 2018. Photo by Stefan Hostettler, Düsseldorf
According to the guide, the work:
reflects on the idea of pregnancy as an extreme form of selfhood, examining the tension between the expectant body as a subject and an object.
According to art theorist Amelia Jones, pregnancy is one of the most extreme states of the human condition, as it reveals the ‘tension between self as subject and self as object’. The entire exhibition is a reflection on ‘shifting concepts of selfhood’.
The intersection between bodies and inanimate objects is probably most vividly dramatised in Quan (2009 to 2010) by Berlinde De Bruyckere, where a wax cast of a bony-assed, white person is burrowing into a dirty mattress, for all the world like a character from a Samuel Beckett monologue. We’ve all had mornings when we felt like this.
Quan (2009 to 2010) by Berlinde De Bruyckere. Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth © Berlinde De Bruyckere. Photo by Mirjam Devriendt
Nearby are some elegant if distorted thighs and calves cast in slabby bronze stepping out atop a pair of chunky platform shoes. This is As yet untitled (Croccioni bronze) by Rebecca Warren (UK b.1965). According to the catalogue, these:
striding high-heeled legs fuse high Modernism with the lowly comic book in an expression of pure Eros.
As yet untitled (Croccioni bronze), 2009 by Rebecca Warren. Courtesy Maureen Paley, London © Rebecca Warren
Talking of the erotic, nearby is a striking silk print showing multiple iterations of a photo of a pneumatic naked woman slightly bending forward, much in the style of Andy Warhol. Deprived of a face, and so of much identity, and in its dumb repetition, surely as straightforward an objectification of the female body as you could get.
Untitled (5 Nudes) circa 1980 by John Stezaker. Courtesy of John Stezaker and Friedrich Petzel, New York
Taking the mickey out of all such po-faced, soft-porn images of naked women is Sarah Lucas, sticking her tongue out – as usual – at men, male artists, and office furniture.
Here she’s taken a rugby ball, covered it in glue and then carefully encrusted it with cigarettes laying flat and moulded to the ball’s conical shape. She’s then sawn the result in half and stuck each half to the back-rest of a modern office chair, to create a crude caricature of a female torso.
Oral Gratification by Sarah Lucas (2000) Courtesy of Sadie Coles HQ, London © Sarah Lucas
Lucas’s work, according to the catalogue, is:
characterised by witty verbal and visual puns and a satirical look at sexual politics and the representation of women in the media.
Ever since I saw her stuff in the Sensation exhibition 21 years ago, I’ve loved Lucas’s work and wanted to see more of her bovver boy approach to sculpture and popular culture. It’s a shame she doesn’t seem to be about much any more.
An entirely different and far more earnest approach to sculpture is taken by Tony Cragg CBE (b.1949 Liverpool) represented here by a cast of a head which has been distorted or winnowed by extreme wind and pressure into an apparently melting, futuristic form.
Big Head Green (2009) by Tony Cragg © DACS 2017
So far I’ve picked out six of the biggest, most obvious works, but there were some 16 others, often more subtle and oblique than these examples – like the simple twig with human hair attached made by Bojan Šarcevic, or the set of little puppets made by Wael Shawky which represent the story of the Crusades from the Arab point of view, or the series of postcards of Tudor kings and queens who’ve had their faces defaced by Ruth Claxton.
The whole show is contained in only one room but there’s quite a startling variety of shapes, sizes and types of art on display. Strange, unnerving, unsettling – I liked it a lot. And it is FREE.
Installation view of ISelf Collection: Bumped Bodies at the Whitechapel Gallery. Photo by Steven White
The artists are:
- Maria Bartuszovà
- Huma Bhabha
- Alexandra Bircken
- Tian Doan na Champassak
- Ruth Claxton
- Tony Cragg
- Enrico David
- Berlinde De Bruyckere
- Geoffrey Farmer
- Georg Herold
- Kati Horna
- Sarah Lucas
- Seb Patane
- Pippilotti Rist
- Bojan Šarčević
- Wael Shawky
- Daniel Silver
- John Stezaker
- Nicola Tyson
- Cathy Wilkes
Related links
Other exhibitions currently on at the Whitechapel Gallery
More Whitechapel Gallery reviews
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